Orv Iverson

What was the common attitude of the people concerning the possibility of going to war before the attack on Pearl Harbor?

Isolationism. The ordinary citizen was concerned about domestic economic problems. We had just started to come out of the 1930s depression. Unemployment was high.

What are your memories of December 7th, 1941?

I was on the way to a church youth activity in Minneapolis when I heard it on the car radio. None of us had any idea where it was or the implications of this event.

What branch of the service did you join and why?

I joined the Signal Corps cause I wanted radio training.

What was involved in boot camp and what if any are your most memorable experiences of it?

I was put in charge of the group going to Camp Crowder, MO. We traveled in comfort, dinner in the diner & slept in a sleeper car. It was a dream trip for this Minnesota farm boy, who grew up without electricity & plumbing.

After boot camp, where were you next assigned?

After I took my 3 months radio training & given a T/5 rating, I was sent to Salt Lake City, Wendover AFB, where I & 9 others were interviewed for radio gunner training on B-17s. Unfortunately, a B-17 crashed just as we were about to be interviewed, so no one volunteered. We were then sent to Gowen Field, Boise, ID where we joined the 414th Signal Co. & got our APO number & took a train for six days to Camp Patrick Henry, VA. From there we took a short train ride in a snowstorm on Dec.20, 1942, to the ship at Newport News, VA., where we would then leave for Egypt. Going overseas was like to go off into space. We had no big expectations of returning. Some comrades tried to escape but were promptly brought back by guards. Some broke mentally aboard the month and a half trip to Egypt. Finally, on February 1,1943 we arrived at Port Said and were taken from the ship to the shore on smaller boats. Most of us had difficulty walking on dry land after being on a floating vessel for a month and a half. From the port, we were taken by a train with wooden seats across a desert area to an army camp near Cairo.

What happened to those people who tried to escape and were caught by the guards?

They were put under house arrest, but went with us, in fact all of us were under close security.

What happened to those people who broke down mentally?

I believe they were left on the ship.

What were your feelings upon receiving orders to go overseas?

I had been promised a furlough before going overseas, when I enlisted. Besides our ratings were taken away due to T/O restrictions so my morale was at rock bottom.

Once you landed on foreign soil, was it as you thought it would be?

Totally different than Minnesota!!! Life was cheap. A steamroller ran over an Arab worker, the boss was mad as it spoiled the asphalt job. There were lots of cripples in the street. Most Arabs were Nomadic, dirty & would steal & beg.

What was a normal day like for you?

I was assigned with ten others to attend classes at the RAF school in Helwan, Egypt for four months. The food was prepared by the Arabs, and there was no hot water to wash our mess kits. We had to scrub them with sand after we rinsed them in the cold water. We all got dysentery, and I got malaria. About once a week a British warrant officer would come into the mess hall, click his heels, and salute. He would announce in a pompous manner, "Any complaints?" One day Pvt. White from Chicago responded in a boisterous voice, "Yes, I have a complaint. This stuff tastes like shit!" The warrant officer clicked his heels, snapped a British salute and briskly left.

The British were very demanding. Due to the heat, we went to class at 5AM to 9AM, then in the evening until 9PM. We would take a nap or go for a walk in the park during the midday hours.

How long was it before you would see any action or be very close to any action?

Not until June 7,1944 at Omaha Beach bringing in my radio station for General Elwood Quesada, 9th Tactical Air Command.

What were your feelings when in action or close to action?

When the JU 88s were shot down while we were still on the LCT it was tense not knowing if they would land in the LCT, there was no place to dig in. We cheered when the JU 88 would land in the water, mostly to relieve stress. All the bodies being hauled out by the truck loads gave me the feeling that I would probably be one of them shortly, but I clenched my teeth & kept moving inland. Finally my signal officer called my name & we drove down by Point Hoc & set up the radio station. The many bodies and body parts lying along the road made life seem so expendable. See "Invasion of Normandy" in the stories section.

How many campaigns were you in after the Normandy Invasion and which one stands out the most for you and why?

I had a total of ten campaigns, according to my records, but the worst campaign was the Battle of the Bulge in Dec/Jan 44. My rotation orders had been signed and I was waiting for transportation back to the USA, when on Dec 16, the enemy made the counteroffensive that lasted a month. The weather turned cold with much snow, we had no winter clothes, tank top shirts & cotton boxer shorts for underwear. I was buried when a V-1 buzz bomb hit our billet. Several of my comrades died in that same room. I lost my belongings & my abode. I then lived in a basement with no heat or lighting and with four inches of water. I became very nervous when the Buzz bomb would cut out overhead & I couldn't see it. The bombs came every 15 minutes for about a month. We had been moving forward and believed the war would end by Christmas of 1944. Now we were losing the war. It was a real nightmare.

Reading through your website, you also witnessed the atrocities of the Buchenwald concentration camp. What could you possibly think and feel after viewing those atrocities?

I cry when I try to tell about this horrible sight. Prisoners were walking skeletons, and some were dying around me. I was overcome. How could humans do this to other humans? On the farm I grew up on, if we heard that a neighbor was mistreating animals, my father would confront him. Words cannot portray this horror.

Do you have any resentment today towards the Germans for what they did to the Jewish people?

I have terrible strong feelings for those Nazis who were responsible, but I don't feel resentment toward the ordinary German. They lived under fear, and I don't think I would have done much better to resist.

Where were you when the Germans surrendered?

I was in some German barracks in Weimar, three miles from Buchenwald. However, this was a day without much celebration. When the day we had waited so eagerly finally came, a rather strange thing happened. Victory in Europe was announced in the army paper so we felt assured this must be the real thing. We had heard many rumors to date. Anyway, we felt it was time to take down the tarpaper blackout curtains. While we were taking down the window coverings, we heard a familiar sound. The pom-pom of anti-aircraft guns, and the slate was falling off our German barracks roof. We promptly lay down on the floor. I peeked out the window and I saw a German jet plane circling low, almost below eye level. The AA guns were firing behind the jet, not being accustomed to the higher speeds of jet planes. I could see it slide onto the airstrip at the field near Weimar. In a matter of seconds the shooting stopped. We got down to the field as soon as possible. The jet and Studka dive-bombers were loaded with Germans who were escaping from the Russians. This was the end of the war in Europe, VE Day!

How did you feel upon hearing that the Germans surrendered?

We were not sure the war had really ended. We soon found our chances for going home in the near future was not likely. Rumors were that we were going to fight the Russians. My signal officer wanted me to go with him to Manila. He gave me a good promotion, but I thanked him & said I had had enough. However, ironically, he got home before I did.

What did you think when you heard about the Atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

I think it worried me when I realized how many people were killed, but I was glad to see the war end.

What were your feelings when you heard that Japan surrendered?

I was still trying to get home after more than 3 years, but finally I got on the Queen Mary and got home October 1945.

After the war ended, how long was it before you got home?

Of course the talk from now on was about getting home and getting discharged from military duty. Well, this wasn't going to be as easy as we had imagined. The minimum requirements for a discharge was 85 points, I had 122 points, probably as high as anyone who had served as a GI during WWII. I had been qualified to receive ten bronze service stars for the different campaigns I had served in. However, first priority for transportation would go to the GIs being sent to finish off the Japs.

I was transferred out of the 926 Signal Battalion to the 8th Tactical Air Command Squadron. The 926 were being sent to fight the Japs so anybody with more than 85 points would be removed from the 926. At this point, there was little to do. My radio operator's duties were finished.

Day after day passed without any indication we were going to obtain transportation to the USA. We talked much about ways to get home. One day we were talking about trying to buy a fishing boat from a French fisherman and sail it home. One of the GI's who apparently was listening to our conversation took it quite seriously. When he realized how farfetched our proposals were, he became very incensed. However, most of us slept late in the day and then played basketball and some of us set up a photo lab for processing and enlarging film to pass the time. I attempted to get a pass to Scotland but to no avail. I even signed up for a Norwegian language course, which would allow us to travel to Norway, hoping I could get to Scotland this way.

By August my morale was pretty low. Sometimes I would hitch rides on airplanes. Roy and I took a wild ride on a Canadian Bush plane piloted by a former crop duster. He would go into dives and then pull up suddenly, then abruptly level off. Roy became sick and vomited into his cap. I was sitting behind the pilot so I tapped him in an attempt to let him know Roy was sick. I sort of had a case of the giggles, so when I poked him, he thought we wanted more. One time we took a ride to Frankfurt with a couple of fighter pilots who had not flown this type of plane. They forgot to trim the plane so it hit the metal mesh runway very hard and bounced high into the air. We wondered if they were going to get us down in one piece, but they finally did it. Anyway, this was the way the months were passed.

Finally on August 26, my birthday, someone from the message center came to me and said a message had come through indicating I and two other GIs would be sent back to the USA. On August 28, I, and two others left by jeep for Frankfurt. I could hardly believe this was happening. We waited on the runway for about ten days before the weather was clear enough in England to bring a plane for us. Day after day we were disappointed, but finally the day came that our plane was to take us to England to catch a boat back to the USA. Sometime during these days of waiting to go home I had painfully written to Helen in Scotland saying that our plans for our future together must be abandoned.

The flight from Frankfurt to England was a rough ride, enclosed in fog most of the way. We were not able to land at an airport in south England so we dropped through a small hole in the clouds and fog and landed near Manchester. At the railway station, we met a British Major who invited us to ride in his rail cabin with him. Somehow we ended up at a camp near Salisbury, Tidsworth where the 2nd Armored Division was encamped before the invasion. We were given a mattress cover and straw to stuff it with. That was our mattress. I can remember getting the hiccups and every time I hiccupped, the mattress made a noise. About 2AM I went over to the gym and stood on my head and counted to one hundred. It worked!

Because we were late, we missed the boat we were supposed to take. It was a German liner. During the wait for the next available ship I made visits to my Salisbury friends. Margaret was stationed nearby so we had some visits together. After about ten days, we were notified that we would be boarding the Queen Mary and that we had to clear through customs. I had a German burp gun in my duffel bag and the barrel had worn through the fabric. I did not want to take a chance on being delayed so I promptly threw it in the nearest garbage can.

The trip aboard the Queen Mary took about five days. We took turns sleeping indoors one night, then the next out on the deck. After one night inside, I slept outside the remaining nights. The trip home was uneventful, except I met Lt. Staib who had a nasty scar just below his left eye from that night of the buzz-bombing attack of December 28. As we passed the Statue of Liberty, the ship tilted south with all the GI's on that side. Fireboats in the harbor were sounding their horns and spraying water into the air. This was pretty comforting because we thought we may have been forgotten by now. As we pulled into Pier 90, Jo Stafford was singing for us. An army general was with her. She was applauded and he was booed. The Red Cross was on the dock with milk and doughnuts. I must have drunk a gallon of milk, the first in three years. The first thing I did after drinking milk was to phone my brother at Fort Slocum, a nearby camp off New Rochelle. I was all choked up emotionally when I tried to talk with him on the phone. He was going on guard duty so he could not meet me.

We were taken by ferryboat to Hoboken, New Jersey. From there we went by train to Camp Kilner for orientation to civilian life. It must have been 2AM when we left from there by train to Camp McCoy, Wisconsin. It was after midnight when we started our processing there. I had some dental work that needed to be done. They gave us the option of going home first, then reporting back to complete dental work and any other processing.

I left Camp McCoy that same morning and arrived in Minneapolis where my Dad met me at the Great Northern Railway Station. I was totally overcome emotionally to the point I was not able to speak. I could not believe this moment I had dreamed about, but could find, at times, hard to believe it could happen. Mother had one of her delicious meals ready when I arrived. Unfortunately, I was so excited I couldn't eat much. It had been three and a half years, much of the time not expecting to return.

Do you feel that serving your country changed your life in anyway?

Yes, very much so, my spiritual life was made stronger. I was always praying, separation was the difficult part of my experience, especially when I realized I may not see my family & friends again. I had terrible nightmares, and the nightmares were worse than reality. In reality I could try to hide in a hole or dig myself out when I was buried, but in my dreams I had no control. I have felt better when I have been able to articulate my experiences, but at first I kept everything inside.

In closing, is there anything you would like to add?

I just would like to say how grateful I am to have survived. I have a wonderful wife, Mary, and 12 grandchildren, some adopted, but loved just as much. My brother's WWII experience wasn't as easy as mine. He was drafted and ended up as a machine gunner going through three invasions, North Africa, Sicily & Italy. He broke mentally and has never recovered. He has kept it inside, and only recently has articulated his terrible experience.

While working at the signal office in early June, a fairly good sized package arrived via courier. It was marked BIGOT. Airplanes were painted with white stripes on their wings. I was ordered to have my truck ready to leave in the morning in a convoy with the Second Armored Division. I was issued a belt that would be inflated by an enclosed CO2 cartridge. The next morning a 2nd Armored MP accompanied me as we joined the convoy heading to South Hampton. As we drove along, the English people lined the roads, as if it were a parade, cheering and waving flags. Along the way I accidentally set off the Carbon Dioxide capsule so my life belt inflated. Unfortunately I had had no instruction about the use of my belt. It nearly cut me in half before I discovered how to unfold it. This was June 6th.

After a long drive in the continuous convoy we arrived in the staging area where there were military vehicles of all sorts as far as we could see. Someone had a radio so we heard the news that the invasion had begun. However the news did not sound good, especially in the Omaha Beach area. There was some question about being able to hold the beachhead. That evening I had to back my truck onto the LCT, an open landing craft that held about five vehicles, all 2nd Armored. On board the LCT we had no toilet facilities, except a small toilet for the navy crew. Some GI's became seasick so they had to hang over the side to vomit. There was a cable to hang onto, and that was our toilet facilities during the ten hour journey across the English Channel. When we arrived on board the LCT at daybreak on June 7 there was so much action taking place I find it difficult to remember the sequence of events. The big navy guns were firing point blank into the cliffs, probably the Point Hoc area, I cannot say with any degree of certainty. The entire area as far as I could see was busy with all kinds of landing craft and navy ships. The channel crossing was very rough with chilling spray coming over the sides of the LCT. There had been no place to sleep aboard the LCT, but I do not remember being tired. I believe we must have been pretty well hyped at this point. I can remember having a can of hot pea soup which heated itself when a tab at the bottom was pulled. I only saw something like that once.

Our LCT positioned itself to make the run into Dog-Red area of Omaha Beach. There were plumes of water from explosions from unknown sources which caused the LCT to make sharp turns. I think we would have made the landing within five minutes, but in one of the abrupt evasive turns we collided with another landing craft. I happened to be in view of the collision point. The two landing crafts did not seem to be moving very fast, but the three quarter inch steel ramp seemed to crumple like cardboard.

The damage from the collision caused the ramp to hang-up so we had to remain off Omaha Beach until the Seabees could come with a torch to repair the unloading ramp which was lowered upon hitting the beach. We had to remain off Omaha Beach for two nights. During that time there was considerable amount of firing of Navy big guns, now they were firing salvo after salvo over our heads. At night German bombers would come over. Our Navy AA guns would set up an umbrella of antiaircraft fire. When the German bombers would get hit there would be flickers of flames coming from the wings. At that point the hit bomber would drop down to gain speed. However when it would pull up again the entire plane became engulfed in flames. The flaming plane would go into a slow spiral. This was taking place over our LCT. I can remember my teeth chattering, probably both from fear and cold, then when the bomber hit the water we would cheer as if it was a football game. What a relief!

I was scheduled to bring in the FM radio station early morning of D-1. Finally on the morning of D-3 our LCT headed to the beach. The ramp dropped about a quarter mile out in the water. We were given orders to keep our vehicle in its lowest gear, with all wheels powered, and keep the engine running at full throttle. Also we were told to drive straight until we were out of the water. My truck made it very well, but as I made my left turn on the beach to head up the hill, I noticed the truck behind me started his turn before he was out of the water. The last view I had of this truck was the top of his cab disappearing under water. Apparently he had driven into a shell hole.

In England we had been told that we would be driving on the left side of the road, like in England. I soon discovered this incorrect. As I drove my load of radio equipment up the hill from the beach I noticed other six by six trucks with stretchers placed from bench to bench with soldiers on them. At first I thought they were wounded GI's being taken back to England, Then I realized they were the dead GI's being removed from the battlefield. Also I noticed six foot high piles of bloodied blankets piled all around. As I drove on farther I met a truck heavily loaded with bodies piled in a criss-cross, helter-skelter fashion. These were German soldiers being taken to a bulldozed burial place. At this point I couldn't help feeling I could be one of those dead GI's being hauled out of the battlefield.

I was supposed to meet a couple of the signal officers. I tell you I had no idea how I was to meet them. As I drove inland, the road was lined with dead soldiers, also dead bloated cattle with their legs outstretched. One dead soldier with curly hair really hit me emotionally. He looked just like a dear friend from high school days.

I gritted my teeth and continued to drive inland. Suddenly without any expectation the two signal officers from the 9TAC waved me down. They had not been able to set up any kind of camp yet, but were trying to locate inland from Point Hoc. We had to stay out of sight in an orchard until it was safe to set up the radio station. I can remember an argument between two officers about the bale of blankets aboard my truck. Also I can remember a gas attack alarm when a British Major had lost his gas mask and was in a panic. I told him he could sit in the cab of my truck to protect himself from mustard gas. I crawled under my truck with my gas mask in place. Generally things were mostly chaotic with explosions and confusion all around. I have difficulty remembering the sequence of events. However eventually we got the radio station in place. I can remember the General asking that coffee be dropped when he spoke with headquarters back in England. We eventually set up in a more permanent site inland from Point Hoc, near Grand camp-Criqeville area.

We set up tents along the hedgerow near a farmhouse. I had two shelter halves, but at night the navy guns would make our tents bulge up. It was almost impossible to get much sleep. One night flares lit up the area. I do not know where they came from. One night a large bomb hit about thirty yards from my tent. The bomb crater was filled with dead cows for the next day or so.

Lt. Col. Hopkins asked me to drive him down to the beach to pick up some K-Rations. He gave me the wrong directions so we ended up in a dangerous situation. As we drove up this narrow Normandy road lined with hedgerow, I noticed riflemen walking alongside dropping down at intervals when the machine gun fire became louder. All at once in front about 25 feet to our left the dirt started churning up from what appeared to be larger machine gun fire. At that point Col. Hopkins said "Iverson, let's get the hell out of here!" Before he finished his command I was turning the truck into the right hedgerow, into the pasture with another right turn. Then I drove it down the pasture at full speed and drove through another hedgerow. After a drop of about four feet I attempted to turn the truck to the left to get away from the machine gun fire. The steering wheel spun freely, without turning the wheels. The steering mechanism was broken. We jumped out of the truck and ran down the road, finally catching a ride down to the beach.

At the beach we found an abandoned jeep and had it pushed to a sputtering start. We loaded up the battered jeep with a couple cases of K-Rations and got back to camp just as it was getting dark. I never did see my truck again, nor was I ever asked about it. My next means of transportation was an abandoned motorcycle, which Major Rains and I shared until the engine stopped due to lack of oil.

I can remember one time we were experiencing small arms fire coming from the orchard across the street. We determined that it was coming from a small garden house. I was able to flag down a 2nd Armored Division six wheel armored vehicle. They fired a round from its cannon at the garden house door. The shot knocked down the door and four German soldiers came out with their hands clasped over their heads.

We had no way to wash or shave so as the days went on we began to look and smell bad. Also, we had gas impregnated woolen OD's which we lived and slept in without even changing our underwear. Our sleep was interrupted by the big Navy guns shooting over us, and there were many unexplained explosions. I developed an intestinal problem with large amounts of blood being excreted.

One day after a couple weeks had passed I was told that I was to fly back to England to destroy the secret communications left by the signal section. This was good news to me. I can remember taking off in the C-47 from the airstrip on the hill above Omaha Beach with the battlefield in view.

I believe I had been in Normandy about three weeks. I had not bathed, changed my clothes, or had a hot meal during that time. The first thing I did when I arrived back at Middlewallop was to take a long hot bath. The messhall was the next stop.

Now Normandy seemed more like a dream, or I should say a nightmare. I attended the evening services at Brown Street and was asked to speak. I was the first soldier back from Normandy at the church. The people listened with great interest. However, I'm afraid I disappointed them. I was not allowed to reveal any details about the invasion. Margaret had joined the army and most of my comrades had left the base. I was busy cleaning out the classified papers. Some radio messages were desperate requests for air cover, saying they could not hold out longer without air support. These were radio messages from the GIs in the initial stages of the invasion.

On the night of December 28, I finished my duty at midnight. As I walked back to our billet with the other radio operators, I can remember one operator especially, Jim Monger. He sort of took me under his wing when I was placed with Company A of the 926 Signal Battalion to work as radio operator. The buzz bombs were dropping very close to us as we neared our billet. Jim decided to sleep down in the basement so he would be rested to go back on duty again in the morning. I was feeling extremely tired so I did not want to move my cot and bedding down into the dirty, damp basement. Even though the bombs were falling very close, I crawled into my cot, pulled the blankets over me, also I placed my jacket over my feet to help keep them warm. Immediately, I fell asleep.

The next thing I found myself buried under the wooden chalkboard that had been hanging on the wall above my head. A buzz bomb had exploded just outside of our window. It was difficult to breathe. There was a strong smell of gunpowder. My cot had broken from the weight of the debris resting on the wooden chalkboard. I was able to extricate myself from the debris. As I emerged from the debris I could see just less than twenty feet from me, a blue flame. I believe it was a magnesium part from the buzz bomb. I hurried as fast as I could in the opposite direction over piles of debris. As I was passing through what was left of the doorway, I could see one of the GIs, I believe his name was Harris. He was face up, buried under large beams. His face was pure white in the moonlight. He did not make any moves so I assumed he was dead. Later I found out he had survived.

I tried to go to the building across the street where the others were housed. I staggered almost all the way across the street, but I collapsed by a wall. The next thing I knew I was being carried by a very large GI into the building where I was put on a cot. I began regaining my senses on the cot when Lt. Staib was brought in. He was bleeding badly from a large flap of skin hanging from his cheek. I got up to give him my cot and as I was going out the door Chaplain Brooks gave me his trousers. I only had my summer underwear on. Also as I got out the door two medics grabbed me and attempted to put me in their ambulance. However, just as I was getting into the ambulance, Jim Monger came along and told me there was a need to help dig out the GIs who were still buried.

The sky had cleared so the moonlight cast an eerie effect over the demolished building which only minutes before had been our dormitory where most of the GI's were sleeping soundly. I walked back to where the other GI's were still buried. Because the chaplain was very tall the legs of his trousers folded over the bottom of my feet, sort of protecting my bare feet from the cold and the broken glass and other sharp debris. Snow was all around us, but the explosion had scattered dirty debris so very little of the snow was evident. The blood from my leg injuries had caused my borrowed pants to stick to my feet. I was coughing up blood, and had blood trailing from my nostrils. My chest was giving me some pain. However as I try to recall feeling the cold and pain, it seems like some kind of a dream I was locked into. I didn't seem to feel the cold even though at this point I only wore my summer underwear and the chaplain's GI pants. It was as if the pain and cold was irrelevant.

At first I came upon Sergeant Hunt. Some of the other GI's were feverishly pulling away with their bare hands the bricks that covered Sergeant Hunt. Apparently he died instantly while he slept on his cot. We carried his body out of the debris and the medics took him away. In the meantime we could hear the muted voices of the kitchen crew from far under the debris. There were some timbers, which left an opening so with flashlights we could see someone's hand. By now more help was arriving so we took turns pulling off the debris at a feverish rate. After awhile we did not hear any sounds coming from under the debris. It was too late. No one was alive. We found Fritz in his bunk. There was blood oozing from his ears, but seemingly no apparent injuries that caused his death.

My bunk had been in the same room so my friend Jim helped me recover some of my belongings. A wooden chalkboard had fallen off the wall and covered me and John Pasquale, but my cot had broken from the weight of the debris. I think this may have saved us. I was able to find my British issue battle jacket that I used to cover my feet at night for warmth. The inside lining was shredded from flying debris.

I find it difficult to remember the next phase of this the night of the 28th of December 1944. I must have passed out again, at least I cannot remember much until I woke when daylight arrived and found myself on a pile of debris in what was left of the basement of the building across the street.

I guess I was not sure what I was supposed to do at this point. Actually I was supposed to be on duty at the radio station, but it was as if I was forgotten. I walked over to the 9TAC operations where Major McCabe saw me and said, "Iverson, it looks as if you've had a tough night, why not use the officers' washroom to clean up?" I gave no explanation for my condition, but thanked him and promptly washed my face and washed the blood off my legs and feet.

I managed to find a cot and set it up down in the basement of the operations building. It was a reinforced concrete room about seven feet by five feet. The floor was covered with about four inches of water, but I placed some broken concrete slabs for stepping stones to my cot. When I slept I had to keep all my belongings on the cot with me. I felt relatively safe and it was not far from the radio van. Some of my old comrades from the 9TAC stayed there so that helped.

I believe it was the last of April 1945 when we arrived in Weimar and set up the radio station near the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. At first opportunity I paid a visit to the camp. I guess by now I should have been hardened to death and suffering. Well, what I saw and smelled at this concentration camp was more than what anyone could have imagined. More than anything, this convinced me how important our mission had been. I had heard about concentration camps, but I believed much of the information was embellished propaganda.

As we entered the gate at the camp we found out from one of the German speaking GIs that the saying above the gate said, "Those who enter these gates, pass out as smoke." The odor was overwhelming. Sort of smelled like the out house on our farm, but much worse. Starved corpses were stacked like cordwood in front of the furnace buildings, where their bodies were cremated and the heat was used to heat the SS barracks. The bone ashes were piled outside the furnace room and was used for fertilizer. Some of the living prisoners were barely able to walk, some were in the hospital, stacked like loaves of bread in wooden shelves, no mattresses, and lying in their own excretion. In the latrine there was a six-foot trench where some of the prisoners had fallen and were lying in feces. While talking to an English speaking prisoner, I noticed a commotion behind us. I asked about it and he told me one of the SS guards had committed suicide. When I looked at the SS guard I noticed his throat had been cut from ear to ear and there was no knife nearby.

Downstairs under the furnace room there was a set up for torture methods. The prisoners were hung by their thumbs and beaten. The deep scratches showed on the walls where they were attached by their thumbs. Also, there was a "hospital" where "experiments" were done on the prisoners. In a sort of showcase was displayed a lamp with a lampshade made from the skin off the breast of a prisoner. After a few days citizens from the nearby areas were brought in to be forced to view the campsite. Many shed tears, some were overcome, emotionally, and some stared in cold silence.

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